Leadership Best Practices

Solana tech leads sit between auditors, product, community, and engineers shipping Anchor programs at 2am. These practices keep quality high without becoming the team bottleneck.

How to Use This List

Self-assess monthly as tech lead or EM
Use in 1:1s with engineers aspiring to lead
Pair with DORA and incident metrics for outcomes

A - Technical Judgment

Every irreversible decision has an ADR within 48 hours. No tribal knowledge.
Design reviews scheduled before large programs/ PRs. Security reviewer assigned.
Spikes time-boxed to 72 hours. Data ends architecture debates.
Stack versions pinned in team handbook. Agave 4.1.1, Anchor 0.32.1, kit 7.0.0.
Tech debt tickets visible on roadmap. Not hidden "cleanup sprints" only.

B - People & Growth

Review SLA met for direct reports' PRs. Or explicit delegate reviewer named.
Juniors present one RFC per quarter. Builds communication muscle.
Runbook backup assigned for every critical path. Bus factor > 1.
Post-incident blameless facilitation. Lead does not assign personal fault.
Leveling rubric shared and used in promos. Evidence-based growth.

C - Delivery Balance

Launch go/no-go includes security + ops checklist. Not product date alone.
Disagree-and-commit with dissent in ADR. No passive resistance.
Protect 20% capacity for unplanned incidents. Especially pre-mainnet TVL.
Delegate devnet deploys before mainnet season. Grow bench strength.
Say no to scope with written trade-off. Offer smaller shippable slice.

D - External Stakeholders

Auditor engaged early with RFC packet. Not PDF dump at end.
Community comms aligned with eng facts. No promises ahead of ADR.
Exec updates: metrics not jargon. DORA + incident trend quarterly.
Bug bounty scope published pre-mainnet. Reduces chaotic reports.
Vendor RPC relationships have named owner. Not "whoever has API key."

FAQs

Tech lead vs staff engineer?

Lead owns delivery + people; staff owns cross-team architecture depth - roles can overlap in startups.

Still code?

Target 30-50% hands-on pre-PMF; shift to review/architecture as team grows.

Burnout signals?

Every PR waits on you; skip mentoring; dread incident pages - delegate sprint.

Non-Rust tech lead?

Possible with strong client/ops lead + senior program architect partner.

Measure leadership?

Team DORA, incident MTTR, review SLA, retention, promo pipeline diversity.

Conflict with founder?

ADR + risk memo; escalate with user-safety framing.

Remote leadership?

Over-communicate written decisions; extra RFC async time.

When step back to IC?

Explicit role change; do not ghost leadership duties mid-quarter.

Lead across time zones?

Follow-the-sun on-call; overlap hours for RFC only.

First week as lead?

Read all ADRs, run incident drill, meet each engineer's career goals.

Technical Decision-Making - decision frameworks
Delegation & Spreading Context - reduce bottleneck
Delivery Best Practices - release excellence

Stack versions: This page was written for Agave 4.1.1, Solana CLI 3.0.10, Anchor 0.32.1, anchor-lang 0.32.1, Rust 1.91.1, @solana/kit 7.0.0, Surfpool 0.12.0, and LiteSVM 0.6.x.

Leadership Best Practices

Solana tech leads sit between auditors, product, community, and engineers shipping Anchor programs at 2am. These practices keep quality high without becoming the team bottleneck.

How to Use This List

Self-assess monthly as tech lead or EM
Use in 1:1s with engineers aspiring to lead
Pair with DORA and incident metrics for outcomes

A - Technical Judgment

Every irreversible decision has an ADR within 48 hours. No tribal knowledge.
Design reviews scheduled before large programs/ PRs. Security reviewer assigned.
Spikes time-boxed to 72 hours. Data ends architecture debates.
Stack versions pinned in team handbook. Agave 4.1.1, Anchor 0.32.1, kit 7.0.0.
Tech debt tickets visible on roadmap. Not hidden "cleanup sprints" only.

B - People & Growth

Review SLA met for direct reports' PRs. Or explicit delegate reviewer named.
Juniors present one RFC per quarter. Builds communication muscle.
Runbook backup assigned for every critical path. Bus factor > 1.
Post-incident blameless facilitation. Lead does not assign personal fault.
Leveling rubric shared and used in promos. Evidence-based growth.

C - Delivery Balance

Launch go/no-go includes security + ops checklist. Not product date alone.
Disagree-and-commit with dissent in ADR. No passive resistance.
Protect 20% capacity for unplanned incidents. Especially pre-mainnet TVL.
Delegate devnet deploys before mainnet season. Grow bench strength.
Say no to scope with written trade-off. Offer smaller shippable slice.

D - External Stakeholders

Auditor engaged early with RFC packet. Not PDF dump at end.
Community comms aligned with eng facts. No promises ahead of ADR.
Exec updates: metrics not jargon. DORA + incident trend quarterly.
Bug bounty scope published pre-mainnet. Reduces chaotic reports.
Vendor RPC relationships have named owner. Not "whoever has API key."

FAQs

Tech lead vs staff engineer?

Lead owns delivery + people; staff owns cross-team architecture depth - roles can overlap in startups.

Still code?

Target 30-50% hands-on pre-PMF; shift to review/architecture as team grows.

Burnout signals?

Every PR waits on you; skip mentoring; dread incident pages - delegate sprint.

Non-Rust tech lead?

Possible with strong client/ops lead + senior program architect partner.

Measure leadership?

Team DORA, incident MTTR, review SLA, retention, promo pipeline diversity.

Conflict with founder?

ADR + risk memo; escalate with user-safety framing.

Remote leadership?

Over-communicate written decisions; extra RFC async time.

When step back to IC?

Explicit role change; do not ghost leadership duties mid-quarter.

Lead across time zones?

Follow-the-sun on-call; overlap hours for RFC only.

First week as lead?

Read all ADRs, run incident drill, meet each engineer's career goals.

Technical Decision-Making - decision frameworks
Delegation & Spreading Context - reduce bottleneck
Delivery Best Practices - release excellence

Stack versions: This page was written for Agave 4.1.1, Solana CLI 3.0.10, Anchor 0.32.1, anchor-lang 0.32.1, Rust 1.91.1, @solana/kit 7.0.0, Surfpool 0.12.0, and LiteSVM 0.6.x.

Leadership Best Practices

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Leadership Best Practices